Display Standard - Veritas et Visus

Veritas et Visus Display Standard February 2009
software guru Walter Bender, the laying off of half of OLPCs staff, and the remaining staff accepting huge pay
cuts. Furthermore, with the prices of mass-market laptops falling, XO-1 is now beginning to face competition from
the commercial manufacturers it was set up to undercut, as well as from a similar initiative by Intel that was
arguably a cynical move in the wake of the publicity afforded to OLPC.
Competition for the XO-1 is also emerging in India, one of the nations OLPC’s efforts were intended to help. The
Indian government having recently announced that a competitor machine developed by the Indian Institute of
Science, Bangalore and the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras will be a cornerstone of delivering its
National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technologies. However just before this
column went to press the first specs came out, and the details are what some might consider a nice bit of karma (see
next article).
Yet despite all of this, and to his great credit, Negroponte is fighting on. As he recently commented, “OLPC should
have trimmed sooner. We have since grown stronger. Almost all the cutbacks were in engineering staff related to
the in-house support of Sugar, which is far better done in the community. In fact, paying people to do it from within
created a degree of control that was unsuitable for real open-source development. There are 600,000 laptops in the
field, 250,000 in transit and another 380,000 about to be made, so the total adds up to about 1.2m. Thirty-one
countries in 19 languages are the exact statistics. It’s less than I anticipated, but still gratifying.”
This modesty in the face of adversity almost misses the fact that if the XO-1s remaining to be made arrive in the
field then OLPC will have surpassed many of the gloomy predictions made in the media, and set a precedent for
future IT philanthropists to follow. Yet perhaps the saddest part of the OLPC
story is that those who have followed Negroponte’s lead so far have done so as
competitors who have benefited from the lessons he and his organization have
had to learn the hard way. Intel has used them to gain positive PR for its
business and the Indian government’s move smacks of a mix of political spin
and protectionism, but it is hard to imagine any of these motives being in
Negroponte’s mind when he founded OLPC. Those of us who have followed
and supported him from the start can only hope that OLPC fights on and that
future generations of electronic engineers will hold him in the high regard he so
richly deserves.
As for the future, a fitter and leaner OLPC is gearing up to deliver a second gen machine and repeat the 1 million
laptop target with digital books, but the final words are best left to Negroponte: “The fact that there are 500,000
children around the world who have laptops is testament to their [OLPC’s staff’s] extraordinary work and is already
a key part of OLPC’s legacy. The future brings with it some uncertainty, some difficulty, but also the excitement
that comes with the rededication to a cause, and a new path that will allow us to realize the moral purpose of OLPC.
I hope that each one of you will remain supportive of OLPC, and its mission of opening up a universe of knowledge
to the world’s poorest children living in the most remote parts of the Earth.” http://www.laptop.org
Vodafone Ireland announces ambitious emissions reduction plans
Despite the current economic crisis, Vodafone Ireland is aiming to invest in reducing its CO2 emissions by 30%
over the next two years by engaging employees with new initiatives on energy, transport and waste. The company
already has a track record of success in reducing its carbon footprint – in 2007 it reported a reduction in energy
consumption equal to 581 tons of CO2, cutting a massive €100,000 off its energy costs, and achieved a further 8%
reduction last year. Boss Charles Butterworth said, “We have the ability to bring about positive change and
encourage others to become 'greener'. Despite challenging economic times... a robust environmental strategy will
provide strong benefits for all of our stakeholders and, more importantly, will allow us to play our part in
combating the challenge that climate change presents.” http://www.vodafone.ie
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